Bad-faith decisions upheld by Turkish Court of Appeal

In two recent decisions the Turkish Court of Appeal has upheld that a distributor acted in bad faith by trying to obtain the trademark of a genuine rights holder, and that if an applicant is aware of the trademark of the genuine owner, it must also be deemed to have acted in bad faith. After the IP Code entered into force in January 2017, the principle regarding bad faith is now one of the relative grounds for refusal.